Bolivian Polling Games

This morning’s Cochabamba daily, Los Tiempos, chose as its big lead article almost a full page of coverage of a new public opinion poll showing Jorge “Tuto” Quiroga with a commanding lead of 10% over Evo Morales [Quiroga 27%, Doria Medina 20%, Morales 17%]. Of course, one minor problem with the poll is that it completely excludes voters outside of Bolivia’s cities. To the paper’s credit, it did, at least, prominently disclose that fact.

Now, regardless of what one thinks of these candidates, polling is polling. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist or a political scientist to understand that a poll like this is, well, just plain goofy. Such silliness. Imagine if you had seen this headline a year ago in the US: A new poll today showed Senator John Kerry with a commanding ten point lead over President George Bush. The poll was taken among voters in downtown Berkeley.

Reliable, scientific polling is based on representative sampling. Why on earth would any credible political scientist do a Bolivian poll and pretend that results from the city alone have validity whatsoever? Why would a respectable newspaper like Los Tiempos use the poll as its lead story?

It may be that the paper is just hungry for some election news to draw attention to its front page. More conspiratorially, maybe the paper’s owners are trying to help Quiroga develop an image of momentum.

In either case, polls like this are only likely to come back and haunt Quiroga later. What happens in October when someone actually produces a poll that includes both the cities and the rural areas (where Morales’ base and support is much, much stronger)? Suddenly the numbers are going to look wildly different and, like it or not, Los Tiempos is going to get stuck with a story showing a Morales surge, when in fact all that really happened is they used a representative sampling.

If polling like this is part of some Quiroga strategy, it may turnout to be as smart as the move by the US Ambassador in 2002, when he warned voters not to support Morales and the MAS and damn near propelled him to first place.

Such is the wild world of Bolivian politics readers.

Dreaming About George Bush

My friends think that I made this up, but it is true. The other night I had a dream about George Bush. He was in the White House where Laura found him banging his head madly against a wall:

Laura: George, stop it! Why are you doing that?

The President: Because there are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Laura: George, they didn’t find any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Why are you doing that?

The President: I am doing this to support human rights in Iraq.

Laura: George, we have killed people left and right in Iraq. Why are you banging your head against the wall?

The President: To build democracy in Iraq.

Laura: George, the new Iraqi constitution doesn’t even support women’s rights. Why are you doing that?

The President: I have to finish what I started.

I guess sometimes my dreams are kind of literal.

Finally, if Rev. Robertson Were in Britain…

The good Reverend has evidently discovered the error of his ways, admitted that he called for the assassination of the elected President of Venezuela, and apologized. His flirtation earlier today, claiming that he really just meant that the US should kidnap the elected President of Venezuela, was evidently a mere trial balloon that turned out to be made of lead.

Meanwhile, to put things in some perspective, this week the UK government plans to release a list of people it will deport and ban from Britain, under new anti-terrorism laws, who "seek to create fear, distrust and division". According to this AP dispatch, the criteria for making the new Banned in Britain list:

…covers those who foment, justify or glorify terrorist violence; seek to provoke terrorist acts or crimes; or promote hatred between communities.

If the new law is applied fairly, it would seem that the Rev. Robertson should not be planning any trips too soon to visit the Queen.

Lucky God Left out Lying

The Rev. Pat Robertson went back on television Wednesday to try to dig himself out of the pit he put himself in earlier this week when he declared that the US ought to assassinate Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. Speaking once again on his Christian Network, Robertson said he never called for Chavez’ assassination, just his kidnapping.

The Reverend declared:

I said our special forces could take him out. Take him out could be a number of things including kidnapping. There are a number of ways of taking out a dictator from power besides killing him. I was misinterpreted.

Of course if you look at the actual text of his comments on Monday you find this:

If he thinks we're trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it.

Well, I suppose it is a good thing that God left out lying when he sent the Ten Commandments down to Moses. You wouldn’t want to have a major US Christian leader breaking two of them in one week.

Pat Robertson Calls for US to Assassinate Chavez

[A Note: Readers, I did not make this one up.]

Pat Robertson, the conservative US televangelist and ally of President Bush, announced yesterday on his Christian Broadcast Network program that the US government ought to assassinate Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. According to this report from AP, what Robertson said exactly was:

We have the ability to take him out, and I think the time has come that we exercise that ability. We don't need another $200 billion war to get rid of one, you know, strong-arm dictator. It's a whole lot easier to have some of the covert operatives do the job and then get it over with.

The Reverend Robertson, having reviewed the Ten Commandments carefully, apparently concluded that number five ceases to have jurisdiction at the southern US border. The Bush administration later distanced itself from Robertson's comments. Other than that, I believe that the story speaks for itself.

Transcript of this Morning's White House Press Briefing Regarding Bolivia

AP: Scott, in recent days the administration has really stepped up its rhetoric on Bolivia. Last week a senior defense official was quoted as saying that recent unrest there is really, "a Cuban project," as opposed to a genuine local protest. Can you elaborate on the administration's intelligence on that?

Scott McLellan: Yes, thank you. The administration is indeed gravely concerned about political developments in Bolivia. As the President has noted about other parts of the world, we think the physical security of Americans is at stake in this.

AP: Wait Scott, are you saying that Americans in Bolivia are in physical danger?

Scott McLellan: No, not Americans in Bolivia. We believe that all Americans face a security risk due to events in Bolivia…Americans in Boise, and Birmingham and Seattle as well.

AP: Did you say Americans in Boise? Under threat from Bolivia? Can you elaborate?

Scott McLellan: Yes, we now have very reliable intelligence that the weapons of mass destruction not found in Iraq are being hidden in Bolivia…

NY Times: Wait Scott…in Bolivia? In Bolivia? What is this intelligence?

Scott McLellan: Intelligence sources in which we have great confidence…now you know I can't go into detail on that…we have evidence that the weapons are being hidden in large skirts being worn by female Cuban agents in the capital of La Paz. We have satellite photos showing these skirts, which really are quite artificially large. Some of these skirts puff out to up to three feet in diameter making an ideal place to conceal such weapons. Eyewitness intelligence on the ground estimates that the number of these skirt concealment devices reaches into the thousands. What we are talking about here is a sizeable arsenal.

NY Times: Scott, wait. Are you suggesting that indigenous women in Bolivia are hiding Saddam Hussein's hidden WMDs under their skirts…that you have hard intelligence on that? That is what you are saying?

Scott McLellan: No, as I said earlier, these are not Bolivian indigenous women, these are Cuban agents operating in disguise and, yes, they are using these Bolivian skirts to hide the weapons in question.

ABC News: Scott, let me get in a question here. Does the administration have photographic evidence of the actual weapons? Is it preparing to show any evidence of this sort to OAS or the UN?

Scott McLellan: Thanks Todd, well we have had a problem on that. Skillfully, these agents have woven themselves in among legitimate indigenous women and this has made the gathering of evidence more difficult. One of our assets on the ground was jailed actually by local authorities for trying to secure photographic evidence. It turned out that the subject in question was just wearing light blue underwear…let me double check on the color on that though.

ABC News: Scott, Scott…wait, do you have any hard evidence to back this up?

Scott McLellan: Yes, I assure you, our intelligence on this is solid and real. We have a photograph of one of these Cuban agents in police custody that we will be releasing shortly. The threat is clear and the President is concerned. We ask all Americans to be on the alert for any women they see walking down the streets here at home, near public reservoirs, power installations and the like, anyone wearing large oversized skirts.

[Note to readers: As real as this may seem, we did in fact make it up. Apologies to those who believed it]

Dead Wrong, Then and Now

As the Bush administration, at its highest levels (Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and others), ramps up its campaign to convince the world that Bolivia’s social upheavals are the handiwork of Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez, it is worth taking a moment to remember that these are the same people who took the US to War in Iraq on bogus claims of “weapons of mass destruction”.

CNN will air a special on Sunday night entitled, Dead Wrong: Inside an Intelligence Meltdown, which documents the administration’s failure starkly. You can watch two excellent excerpts here.

Today more than 1,800 US servicemen and more than 25,000 Iraqis are dead because the nation’s leaders were foolish enough to accept Bush administration propaganda at face value. Can anyone really fathom the full weight of human suffering launched on the basis of the administration’s fabrication and lies?

I can tell you all – living here, not in the US second guessing at things from afar – that the political uprisings of the past five years in Bolivia are the product of genuine Bolivian movements about taking back control of the nation’s future. Agree or disagree with those movements, as you like. But anyone who falls for the wave of fabrication coming from the Bush administration today that these uprisings are manipulations from abroad – you are falling for the same lethal tales once again.

“Fool us once, shame on you. Fool us twice, shame on us.”

And Now Rumsfeld Jumps In

US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is taking a tour of South America this week and yesterday in Paraguay he joined in the Bush administration’s steady drumbeat of blaming Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez for the last five years of Bolivian political turmoil.

Here’s what Rumsfeld said, according to both the BBC and Reuters: "There is certainly evidence both Cuba and Venezuela have been involved in the situation in Bolivia in unhelpful ways." Both reports went on to note that Rumsfeld offered up no actual evidence to support his claim.

So now, from the man who helped sell us a quagmire in Iraq based on invented claims of weapons of mass destruction, we have the warning that what is really going on in Bolivia is political division imported from abroad. Rumsfeld, who famously told us, “death has a tendency to encourage a depressing view of war," is actually quite right that Bolivia’s political instability is, in good part, a product of foreign influence. He just has the sources of that influence wrong.

If the US is concerned about foreign sources of Bolivian political conflict, here are some better candidates to look at:

The Bechtel Corporation: Bechtel took over the public water system in Cochabamba in 2000 and raised water rates for the poor so high that the entire city shut itself down in a general strike for a week, forcing a major Bush corporate ally (Bechtel along with Halliburton was also the winner of one of those no-bid mega contracts to rebuild Iraq) out of the country. The water revolt also lit the fuse of every social rebellion since, because the people won. Here’s our report.

The World Bank: It was the World Bank that forced water privatization onto Bolivia to begin with, by making it a condition of all further water development assistance and debt relief as well. The Bank is just around the corner from the White House and shouldn’t be hard for Rumsfeld to find. Here’s our report.

The International Monetary Fund: In February 2003 the IMF ordered Bolivia to reduce its budget deficit by a draconian amount, as a condition of further aid (and the IMF blessing that controls virtually all foreign aid), despite repeated warnings that the taxes required would spark a public rebellion. Those predictions turned out to be utterly on the mark and 34 people died as a result of the violent, totally avoidable conflicts, the IMF’s policies set off. Here’s our report.

Foreign Oil Companies: Shell, Enron, Petrobras, Repsol, British Gas and British Petroleum are all among the ranks of foreign oil companies who negotiated behind-closed-doors sweetheart deals with the government of Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, giving them effective control over Bolivia’s vast gas and oil reserves. The illegal contracts (they were never approved by the Congress, as required by the Constitution) are a huge source of resentment and at the heart of the public uprisings here in October 2003 in which Goni was forced out (his departure was not because of his policies but because of his violent repression against those who protested those policies). The gas issue was also at the heat of the uprisings here in May and June that led President Carlos Mesa to call it quits.

The US’ Own War on Drugs: For more than a decade the US has poured dollars and DEA agents into Bolivia in a “war on drugs”. Among the results have been thousands of innocents tossed into jail without trial in the name of giving the US Embassy good arrest statistics to show off to Washington. The famed alternative development projects that were supposed to be the positive side of the US effort are mostly a handout to wealthy Bolivian businessman. I know of one specific case (leaked to me by a USAID subcontractor) in which one of the wealthiest men in the region got thousands from the US for a palm heart processing factory and never even paid the campesino farmers who were his suppliers. Here's one of our reports.

Let’s be clear. Does the left in Bolivia have ties and kinship with Cuba and Venezuela? Absolutely. Are the influences from those two countries the reason for Bolivian political upheaval? Absolutely not.

For half a decade Bolivians have been reacting to a set of economic policies imposed on them from abroad, an economic course that they never chose and which has failed quite miserably on the facts.

The hand of the US, directly and through its corporations and the multilateral institutions it controls (the World Bank and IMF) is really the outside influence here and it should come as no surprise to Rumsfeld that it has provoked a reaction.

In the debate over weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, Secretary Rumsfeld argued, “simply because you do not have evidence that something does exist does not mean that you have evidence that it doesn't exist." It was on that basis that Rumsfeld and Bush dragged the US into a war of choice in which more than 1,800 US servicemen and an estimated 25,000 Iraqis have died.

As he tours South America, once again weaving a tale of, “we don’t have proof but we think it is the case,” what new plan does the Bush administration have in mind and who will pay the price this time?

Chavez the Film

The diplomatic battle between the Bush administration and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has been heating up this past week. The US revoked the visas of three Venezuelan military officers that it has accused of being involved with drug trafficking. Then Chavez announced that he was severing his government’s cooperation with the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and accused the agency of spying against the Venezuelan government.

Now the US is talking “sanctions” and Chavez, the world’s fifth largest oil exporter is making noises that there are other markets for his country’s oil besides the US.

I think it is worth making two points here. First, Chavez has more than a little reason to be suspect of the US, after its role in the attempted coup against him in 2002. At worst, the US followed in its long history of such coups against governments it doesn’t like (Iran 1953, Guatemala 1954, Chile 1973, to name a few) and had a major hand a major hand in orchestrating it. At best, the US gave sanctuary to its chief leaders. If dissidents in the US staged a coup against George Bush with Chavez’s help, I suspect that the current White House would not look too kindly on that.

Second, the DEA presence in places like Bolivia and Venezuela is like having a foreign police force on the scene. Once again, let's look at this from the other side. How would people in the US react to this announcement?

Venezuela Sending Special Police to Investigate US Drug Use

The Venezuelan government announced today that it is sending a special force of 100 officers to investigate illegal drug use in ten major US cities. The special Venezuelan forces will train US police and oversee anti-drug operations. “The market for illegal drugs is not in Latin America,” said President Hugo Chavez, “it is in the US and Europe. We realize that our friends in the US have made an effort but, quite obviously, they have failed. For this reason we have decided to take charge of anti-drug policing in your country.”

Hmmm, I am guessing that this would not be well-received.

There is no question that Hugo Chavez is and will continue to be a major flashpoint in Latin American politics. To his supporters he is the champion in the fight against US-backed market fundamentalism that channels wealth to the wealthy and oppresses the poor. To his detractors, including the Bush administration, he a pillar in Latin America’s own axis of evil (with Fidel Castro and Evo Morales thrown in for good measure).

Getting to the truth is not easy. It requires peeling away a mountain of propaganda. I want to alert our Blog readers to an excellent film that does just that. The Revolution Will Not be Televised is a masterful Irish-made documentary that was in Venezuela during the April 2002 coup and is most masterful, in part because the filmmakers had an inside view in the palace both when Chavez occupied it and when the leaders of the short-lived coup took over. The film includes some interesting interviews with Chavez that you won’t find anywhere else, shows the role of the Venezuelan corporate media in the anti-Chavez movement, and shows the dramatic story of how Caracas’ poor and Chavez allies in the military thwarted the plot.

If you get a chance to see the film, I encourage you to do so. Here’s the Web site for information.

Carded for Buying Bleach…The War on Drugs at Work

I was in line at the grocery store yesterday, stocking up on canned peaches and plain yogurt, when I saw it coming. The woman standing in line just in front of me had run into some snag at the cash register and when I looked down at her purchases I knew right way what the matter was.

She was seeking to commit one of those most suspicious of acts under the US War on Drugs. She was trying to buy a bottle of bleach. You know, like Clorox (but not actually Clorox).

Bleach you see, that fine chemical the smell of which reminds us of over-chlorinated high school swimming pools, is what is called in the Drug War trade, “a precursor”. In this case US anti-drug officials do not mean a precursor to, say, sparkly white socks. It is one of the chemical ingredients (kerosene, FYI, is another) used to transform the simple green coca leaf into coca paste and cocaine. So now you know why cocaine is white. It’s the Clorox.

In Bolivia, under the US financed and supervised War on Drugs, if you want to buy bleach you have to present a state identification card and sign a special register which is kept by the store’s manager. Now, to put this into perspective. When my son was 11 and it would be a hot day and I decided in my backyard that a cold beer might be nice, I could send him to the store to buy me one. The only rule covering that transaction was that he could use the change back to buy himself a coke.

This is a country with no rules. You can jam ten people in a Toyota station wagon. No one has heard of seatbelts. Hell, you an even block the nation’s major roads and get away with it. But do not try to buy bleach at a large grocery store. Nope, they need to register everyone who does that. Of course, if you go to the “cancha”, the large open-air marketplace where 90% of the city shops, you can buy bleach there both hassle free and perhaps cheaper.

This, my friends, is the war on drugs, which puts innocent people in jail for years (see this article I wrote years ago about one such case) in the name of ratcheting up arrest statistics to make the Embassy look good to Congress and the State Department. This is the war on drugs that thinks it will cut illegal drug production by making the young mother in front of me (the four year old, I am certain, was a drug trafficker in disguise) register her purchase of bleach.

It is all about looking like we have a War on Drugs. It is not about actually having a war on drugs. When I lived in California one f the campaigns that I help lead was to expand drug recovery programs for pregnant women. If we don’t have drug recovery services on demand for drug users in the US then we do not have a war on drugs.

And here is my favorite tale. The US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has a huge office here, in a vast old Bolivian mansion now hidden behind hideous black iron walls – Fort Gringo – guarded 24/7 by Bolivian police. Many times, if we are walking late at night, my wife and I pass by the entrance and give our greetings to the poor cop stuck with the overnight shift. To stay awake his mouth is jammed full of coca, something that many, many Bolivians do who work long hours. Narcotically speaking a mouthful of coca is a notch or two below a small-sized Starbucks cappuccino.

And there you have it. The US DEA headquarters, from which my government launches its War on Drugs, is kept safe at night by a policeman kept alert by a mouthful of coca.

Any more questions?

A Comment on Comments

Dear Readers:

As regular visitors to this Blog know (we receive an average of 1000 visitors per day, triple that during times when Bolivia is in the news), a couple of months ago we added a new feature, opening the Blog up for comments by readers. For the most part this comments section is being used by the same half dozen people, as a sort of a daily exchange between them on Bolivia. Some of the comments provide new information; some mainly just express strong opinions. Once in a while they go after me personally.

As I have noted before here, I do keep an eye on the comments section from time to time but I really don’t have time to cover it all that closely, or to respond to what is said there. If I devoted my time to that I wouldn’t have any left over for my real work. That said, I welcome all comments people have to share, friendly, hostile or otherwise. The moment that any of us start to think that we have an exclusive handle on the truth and can’t learn from what other people have to say is the moment we slip into arrogance, and politics these days already has that in ample supply.

So comment away. Free speech is free speech.

Jim Shultz
The Democracy Center

Is Chavez Funding Evo? Si o No?

In the run up to the December elections the US State Department has made it a very clear policy to charge, over and over again, that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is providing secret funding to MAS and Evo Morales.

Here’s what the State Department has to say in a formal declaration posted August 5th on its Web site:

The U.S. State Department has expressed its concern that Venezuela is using its wealth gained from oil production to destabilize the country's democratic neighbors in the Americas by funding anti-democratic groups in Bolivia, Ecuador, and elsewhere.

Since the clear Bolivian reference is to MAS (see the additional statement below) it is now the official position of the US government that MAS is not a legitimate political party (the US regularly funds political parties in other countries through the NED) but an “anti-democratic” organization. It would be interesting to know what standard the US uses to establish an organization as “anti-democratic”.

A Pentagon official, deputy assistant secretary Roger Pardo-Maurer, went one big step farther, saying that MAS is actually being managed from abroad (money from Chavez, commands from Fidel). Here’s the quote from an article in the San Diego Union-Tribune:

"There is no question" that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is "providing money and moral support" for opposition forces in Bolivia, who are led by a populist congressman, Evo Morales. While Chavez provides the resources for the Bolivian opposition, Cuban President Fidel Castro provides the direction and organization, Pardo-Maurer said.

The “Fidel is calling all the shots” line is actually pretty funny to anyone who actually follows this stuff, the rough equivalent to “There are Commies under your bed.” How is he providing the “organization”? I have yet to find one Cuban going door to door here for Evo in Cochabamba, and believe me, you can tell a Cuban from a Bolivian by his or her accent. I am sure that Evo gets lots of advice from Fidel when they chat but mostly what MAS seems to be doing is operating without much strategy, reacting to events driven by others.

But is Chavez giving MAS moolah? Amidst all the declarations of such, the State Department has actually been hard pressed to offer up any hard evidence. Here’s an interesting dispatch about a news conference on the topic last week. According to this article:

US Department spokesman, Tom Casey had a rough time at the press conference in Washington attempting to brush off questions about concrete evidence of Venezuela's alleged destabilization campaign in South America. Casey refused to release damning details, claiming that they were based on intelligence secrets and unavailable for public distribution. Ducking an insistent call from reporters to provide evidence, an embarrassed Casey urged them to seek out public archives and read newspaper commentaries about the Venezuelan government's activities in Bolivia.

This is starting to sound a lot like the hunt for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

I am not saying here that Chavez hasn’t given support to MAS (it wouldn’t be a big surprise to me, frankly) but if anyone has actual evidence that he has, I’d sure like to see it. As the saying goes, “Show me the Money!”

All of this begs the question of course of how hypocritical it is for the US to charge any nation with seeking to influence the politics of another. Shall we recite the list...war in Vietnam, coup in Chile, backing the Shah, invading Iraq... The US has made invading and influencing other nation’s internal politics a national pastime. Saying that Chavez (rightly or wrongly) is giving cash to MAS is a little like Godzilla calling a lizard a reptile.

Have at it commentators.

…Yes, But Can They Govern?

Another reflection on the coming elections.

In the coming weeks, as the various parties begin to solidify the political bases with which they will march towards December 4, much of the writing and attention will be devoted to who can win. As the MAS shores up its prospects, here is the harder question being asked by many MAS supporters behind closed doors: Could MAS, if it did win, actually govern?

To be sure, there is a lot of distance between where we are and the event of an actual Evo Morales presidency, but the question is an important one.

We know that “Tuto” Quiroga can govern. He did for a year. We also know pretty much how he will govern. Expect an economic policy tilted full scale toward foreign corporations and the desires of the US Embassy. Expect a “mano duro” (i.e. repression) against any large scale civil disobedience or highway blockades. Expect to see the apparatus of Bolivian government placed into the hands of the same basic elite that finds its way into most “traditional party” governments here.

Evo and MAS, on the other hand, is much more of a leap into the great unknown. The MAS runs a few small towns here and there in more rural areas. But this is not Brazil, Lula, and the Workers Party (PT). There, before Lula captured the presidency, the PT ran some sizeable city and state governments and got the work of governance under their belt before heading the nation. Not so with MAS.

There is a good deal of talk among strong MAS supporters about Evo and MAS being unprepared to actually run the country. There are also some local stories that aren’t too pretty. This weekend I ran into an old friend of mine, an elderly woman from the small town adjacent to Cochabamba, Tiquipaya, a place where she was born and has lived all her life. Until the last city elections, their mayor was a well-liked local doctor who also gave (and still gives, she says) free medical care on the weekends. She says that he did a lot for they city but was ousted in a wave of local MAS organizing that wanted to run the small town itself. Now she says the new Mayor doesn’t listen, mostly talks on his cell phone when people try to talk to him, and my friend the little old lady with Coke bottle glasses isn’t happy.

On the natural she should be a MAS supporter but her animosity isn’t ideological, but born of experience.

I have worked in government and the task of governance is not easy. It involves identifying problems, analyzing solutions, forging compromises, and actually figuring out how to get things done over the hurdles of corruption, incompetence and bad luck. So in additions to the high speed campaigning underway here there is a parallel move by some “professional” people on the left here to sort out how MAS might actually put together a government should it have the chance come January. It is not an enviable task.

The Left Begins to Unite

During the first month of election preparations here in Bolivia, the scenario looked much like this:

First, Jorge “Tuto” Quiroga looked to be developing a broad, united and articulate campaign to try to make Bolivia’s political right wing look like the instrument of reform.
A former Banzer Vice-President has been using the world “indigena” in almost every other sentence of his political speechmaking.

Second, the three major parties n the mega-coalition that took office in 2002 each seemed to be imploding. The MRN of Goni and the MIR of Jaime Paz will field candidates so weak they don’t register in the polls. The NFR, which is still essentially the party of one man, former Cochabamba Mayor Manfred Reyes Villa, probably won’t have a candidate as all as “Bon Bom” (as he called) aims lower and runs for governor of the state of Cochabamba.

Third, Bolivia’s political left has looked like a movement caught off guard and deeply fragmented. Every week you could find a new gathering of political groups on the left, harshly critical of MAS candidate Evo Morales and planning a separation. Half the people present at these seemed to be getting ready to launch Presidential candidacies of their own. Disunity was almost becoming the left’s strategy – every region with its own Presidential candidate.

In other words Tuto has looked like a candidate free of the big divisions that usually hold the “traditional” parties to 22% or so (equal to Evo’s take in 2002). Tuto has looked capable of breaking into 30% support and higher.

However, as political winds tend to do, Bolivia’s are shifting.

Samuel Doria Medina, with a fresh new running mate plucked from the Center of Santa Cruz’s campaign for autonomy is starting to eat up good chunks of the political support Tuto was hoping to call his own. This Bolivian election will have two champions of market fundamentalism – one from IBM and one from Burger King (Quiroga spent years working for the former and Median owns the latter in Bolivia).

The left, having taken a look at the political abyss and not found it to its liking, has cooked up another plan. Many of the social movements who are not keen on marching lockstep behind Evo but who see the strategic pitfalls of a divorce, are charting a creative course. The movements (and my intelligence on this is solid) will form a united front behind the well-known and regarded political analyst Alvaro García Linera. Rather than launch his own candidacy, García Linera, representing the movements, will agree to be the MAS Vice-Presidential candidate, in exchange for specific commitments on issues such as the convening of an Asamblea Constituyente and restoration of national control of Bolivia’s gas and oil, the two demands in the forefront of the May-June protests.

Besides Quiroga, Medina, and Morales, the other significant candidate will be René Joaquino Cabrera, the Mayor of Potosi, who heads a political alliance of several of the country’s mayors, including those of La Paz and Cochabamba. That alliance came close to joining with Morales as well, and while it stopped short of doing so, it is much more likely that it would join a post-election coalition with MAS than with Quiroga.

So now the political question is this: What sort of vote total can we expect from the combination of Evo Morales, with a unified left behind him, and a candidacy backed by the country’s mayors? How will that compare with what Quiroga can get with a strong and getting stronger Doria Medina chipping away at his base? Quiroga has said that if he doesn’t come in first, he won’t accept the Presidency.

Mix all this politics together, do the math, and add in four months of political uncertainties and I might have to take back my words earlier that a MAS victory is impossible.

Now if MAS can just get the US Ambassador to denounce Morales to voters as his predecessor did in 2002 (rocketing his support in the polls) we might just have a real race on our hands.

The Scent of First Friday

One of the moments in Bolivian life when it is most obvious walking down the street that you are nowhere else is on the first Friday evening of the month, as the air fills with the scent of an ancient ritual, the “k’oa” (pronounced co-wah).

As the sun sets, in store after store in the city center here in Cochabamba, and in many homes as well, the fragrant smoke rises from small fires set up on small metal plates on the ground. As the fire gets hot enough people bring out a collection of offerings purchased at the cancha (the market place), trinkets made of hard sugar in the shapes of things wished for in the new month – hearts for love, and the like. These, along with coca leaves and the pungent k’oa plant are placed on the fire.

We did a k’oa last night at our office, which we share with other groups here. One by one people spoke their wishes for the month and poured alcohol on the four corners, marking the four directions.

The fact that this happens in Bolivia every month is a remainder of many things. For many in this, the most indigenous nation in the Americas, life is still tied to the earth and to the rituals and practices of ancestors. This too is a backdrop to the coming elections and the coming discourse between the two Bolivia’s.

There is Bolivia that thinks in terms of four-wheel drives and airplane tickets and another in terms of sandals and old buses on half-paved roads. There is a Bolivia that thinks in terms of capital flows and interest ratios and another that thinks in terms of La Pachamama (Mother Earth). These are two different cultures living side by side and to understand anything that is happening in the corner of the Andes in 2005 one must first understand that.

New Poll Shows Quroga-Medina-Morales

A new poll from Apoyo, Opinión y Mercado published in La Razón shows Jorge Quiroga firmly in the lead for the Dec. 4 presidential elections, followed by Samuel Doria Medina and Evo Morales in a virtual heat. Here are the results:

[A note: If anyone knows some detail on the methodology used in these polls that would be a useful addition here. I would presume that taking an accurate pulse of voters in the campo is pretty tricky.]

Jorge Quiroga 22%
Samuel Doria Medina 16%
Evo Morales 15%
Hormando Vaca Díez 4%
Manfred Reyes 3%
Jaime Paz Zamora 3%
Juan Carlos Durán 3%

Source: Apoyo, Opinión y Mercado / La Razón

“Well, If We Do It…”

Here’s an interesting comparison to make.

For months, the Bush Administration has been hammering away with the allegation (could be true, could be false, I still haven’t seen the documentation) that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is funneling financial support to MAS and Evo Morales. The charge was most recently repeated by US Undersecretary of State for Latin America Affairs, Roger Noriega in July when he said, "It's no secret that Evo Morales reports to Caracas and Havana." Here’s a news clip.
The assertion here, of course, is that there is something sinister with the government of one country overtly meddling in the democratic political process of another – a concern that is certainly valid.

The flip side, however, is that the US quite overtly, through the National Endowment for Democracy, funneled at least $31,000 to organizers of the unsuccessful anti-Chavez referendum in Venezuela. This is not new for the NED, which has a long track record of funneling funds to opposition groups taking on governments the US doesn’t care for.

Today Senator John McCain called on Chavez to end the government’s prosecution of the group that received the NED funds. A Venezuelan judge has charged four leaders of the group with conspiracy for using foreign funds to help finance the referendum. Here's the article.

Perhaps it is naive to think that there ought to be some consistency here, but if the US overtly tries to topple a democratically elected government by helping finance a referendum (and it would be more naive to assume that that is ALL the US has done and is doing to topple Chavez) then by what justification does the US proclaim it would be an outrage if Chavez was funneling money to MAS?

It looks a lot like the US government is applying a principle that has become far too familiar of late: “If we do it is it okay. If you do it, it’s an attack on democracy.”

Reinventing "Tuto"

For those following the upcoming Bolivian national elections (December 4th) an important reading assignment is the lengthy interview in last Sunday’s edition of OH Magazine with front runner Jorge “Tuto” Quiroga (it is in Spanish).

Quiroga served as President of Bolivia for a year (2001-2002), moved back to the US with his family, and has returned to wage a campaign for President. The former Texas-based IBM executive is engaged in a whirlwind of reinventing himself, from an image of young technocrat to a unifying champion of Bolivian democracy in a time of crisis.

Tuto the Image

Judging from his interview, Quiroga has armed himself with a forceful and captivating message, one worthy of any well-paid political consultant from the US. He has started a new political party, The 21st Century Alliance (Alianza Siglo XXI) that he proclaims to be a national coalition of citizens with ample representation by indigenous communities, women, youth and other sectors. His goal, he says, is nothing short of remodeling Bolivian democracy from scratch:

“Very few times, surely only once in a life, in my life, or one time in a generation is there an opportunity to make a revolution in democracy, saying this is a new state, this is a new Constitution…”

To do that he calls for breaking the monopoly hold on political power in the country. He wants local governments to be elected by neighborhood, governors and their assistants to be elected directly by the people, and the President to be elected by a second round runoff.

He challenges his chief adversaries, MAS and Evo Morales, with a stinging attack that is likely to have resonance with many here:

“Cochabamba, here we are where MAS won first place in 2002 and what did [Cochabamba] receive in exchange? Did it receive employment programs? No. Did it receive irrigation and roads? No. Did it receive resources for indigenous communities? No.”

[It is worth noting here that MAS has been the opposition and not in the coalition controlling the government and that, in the same interview, Quirgoa uses “being in the opposition” as the reason he bears no blame for the economic policies of Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada. Such is the game of political rhetoric.]

Quiroga then goes on to say:

"The other risk, before [political] fragmentation, is the proposal that is incarnate to MAS, that if you don’t win what you want via democracy, go out into the streets and we have blockades and blockades."

The former and would-be-again President then lays out a list of political promises: expansion of public services, rural electricity, Internet access, telecommunications, clean water, sewage and more, but with no proposal of how to raise the funds to pay for any of these things.

Tuto the Record

Indeed, the lanky young man who I last saw a few months ago in first class on American Airlines with a copy of “The Mystery of Capital” tucked under his arm, makes a striking political package. It is no surprise he is running first in the polls. However, Quiroga brings something else to this race besides image and words – a public record.

First, it should not be forgotten that the man who now portrays himself as a champion of Bolivian democracy rose to prominence as the Vice President to the nation’s former dictator (later turned politician), Hugo Banzer. In politics sometimes we reveal our truest colors by our alliances. The fact that Quiroga willingly served as number two to the man who was Bolivia’s version of Augusto Pinochet in the 1970s should send a shiver up the spine of these who really believe in democracy.

More troubling, during his brief year as President (Banzer resigned in 2001 with fatal cancer) the young Texan-Bolivian outdid his mentor in a chilling category – government killings. Within months of taking office, in the eyes of many here, Quiroga is started to look, "even more like Banzer than Banzer." According to the Permanent Assembly on Human Rights, in just eight months Quiroga's government killed 13 people in political conflicts. Banzer's government, during three years in office, was responsible for 19 government killings. "He is using an even harder hand than Banzer," said Father Luis Sánchez, a Roman Catholic priest who served as President of the Human Rights Assembly's Cochabamba office at the time. "Quiroga's government resembles the darkest hours of the dictatorship [under Banzer in the 1970s], even more than Banzer's did."

On economic issues and specifically the privatization frenzy that has been at the heart of so many political battles here, Quiroga tries to pin the blame for failed economic policy on Sanchez de Lozada (“changes yes, but not those”). However, it was Quiroga and Banzer that presided over, for example, the disastrous handing over of Cochabamba’s public water system to the powerful Bechtel Corporation. It was a deal negotiated behind closed doors and so flawed that not even the World Bank, privatization’s big booster, supported it. When the people of Cochabamba protested rate hikes they could never afford, Banzer and Quiroga sent in troops and started shooting.

In a 2001 interview with New Yorker correspondent William Finnegan, Quiroga defended the Bechtel deal:

"Because it was, it's necessary to bring, to bring private investment to develop the water project. I mean Bolivia is not, it's not the Brazil of the world where they're lining up to invest in different things. I think we've had lots of processes where we'll wind up with not as many bidders as we thought."

One of Quiroga’s main rivals, Samuel Doria Medina went farther and became a co-investor with Bechtel in the privatization.

Words vs. Action

It is a staple of modern politics. In the midst of elections politicians promise the world, obscure their past, and hope that reality won’t catch up to them before the voting is over. As often as not it works. Bolivian politics is no different and no candidate is a saint. Quiroga, however, is spinning an image and a tale that looks very different than what he actually did when he had power.

The San Francisco Mime Troupe Looks at Globalization

As a Bay Area transplant, one of the things I miss most this time of year is sitting on a summer afternoon on the slopes of Dolores Park in San Francisco and seeing the San Francisco Mime Troupe perform its annual show. Through the comings and goings of a Summer of Love, yuppiedom, a dot.com boom and bust, the Mime Troupe and its full-throttled satire has endured.

I won’t be able to see this year’s show, Doing Good, but I was lucky enough to be invited in a few months ago to consult with the writers and actors about the topic it covers – economic globalization and the many different forces at hand. The Troupe calls its new work, “A Fable Based on Fact”, one inspired by the book “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man” by John Perkins. When we talked about the show last April, as the writing was still under way, I told the Troupe that I had come to the conclusion that some of the worst sins committed by institutions like the World Bank and IMF are actually the product of people who think they are doing good things, but are so convinced of their position that they stop seeing obvious failures – like Bolivia’s debacles with water privatization.

If you live in the Bay Area or will be visiting there in the next couple of months, check out the schedule on the Mime Troupe Web site. If you can, go see the show.

Here’s the link to the Troupe’s Web site. Here’s a link to an article published in this month’s Common Ground about the show, which kindly includes a note about The Democracy Center at the end.